I’ve often wondered what a religion would be if it did not involve God. Religions clearly fill some sort of need in the human psyche or else they wouldn’t be so pervasive. So if their were no God, and we didn’t invent God, what would take the place of religion?

Well, here’s the thing, I don’t really know what need religion fills. And God won’t tell me. So I can’t really answer my question. But I did come up with something that seems to have a structure that operates like religion, so I told it to God, and now I’m going to tell it to you.

The Mafia.

Okay, before I get my kneecaps broken, let me say this… I don’t actually know anything about the mafia. Or rather, everything I do know comes from movies, books, and TV. So I know about the fictional mafia but not about the real mafia. But the fictional mafia seems to work a lot like a religion. They have all sorts of rituals. They occasionally go to war with each other. They give a lot of power to the “father.”

I mean, can’t you just see some guy coming over to your house and saying, “You got a real nice soul. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.”